


once we touch the ground we forget who we are

by hikaie



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other, Timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 09:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5086537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikaie/pseuds/hikaie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts out like this: the King, though begrudging and vying for escape every day, has made this their home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	once we touch the ground we forget who we are

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to Megalovania on repeat for ages and got sad and here's a really self-indulgent Sans-centric fic?

Sometimes he can't believe this is his life. It starts out like this: the King, though begrudging and vying for escape every day, has made this their home. It's not terrible. In fact, they've built homes and lives in this place. Generations of monster families have lived and died here. The Under, while a prison, is beautiful. So, it continues like this: Sans wanders the Under and muddles in his disbelief when he's manning his sentry station, or when the mushrooms dim for a scant few hours during what he knows as night, or when he walks the tunnels and caves between Snowdin and Waterfall and counts the 'stars'. It continues to confound him when he stands in the long hall leading to the throne room and stares into Frisk's frightened eyes and has to judge; is this a good day or bad?

He asks himself, why do they all want to leave? He asks himself, perhaps convinces himself too, that if they didn't, none of this would happen.

(The third time he'd killed Frisk he wanted to kill _himself_ afterwards, because how could anything good come of killing a child? In the timelines that they kill his brother and so many others it still feels wrong. But then, there's the timelines where they're a frightened child, not _harmful_ in any deliberate way but striking out in fright, in centuries of ingrained fear, in self-defense. He can tell in their eyes that they can't understand why Sans is dealing punishment. The first time was the fourth time. Sans cried himself to sleep that time, and woke up five days earlier to Papyrus whistling in the kitchen, and a feeling of dread when he thought of walking into the forest that day.)

The Above is such a foreign concept to Sans. It's been synonymous with hope for as long as he can remember (too long.) Once, in a better time, Frisk had told him about Heaven. In an old life, he would have never considered such a thing. In an old life, he loved the Under. In an old life, he hadn't killed a child half a hundred times.

In this life, he thinks the Under is hell.

He thinks of it all differently, eventually. The snow that never bothered him is now a nuisance. The dogs that shed everywhere used to rile him up, but now he stares at the tufts of hair on the floor of Grillby's with nothing but disdain. Papyrus asks him if he's okay when, seemingly one day to the next his entire demeanor has changed. When he stops caring. Three hundred and fifty resets in and he knows he's got to fake it, because if Sans thought killing a child was bad then killing his family was worse.

(He wasn't supposed to _know_.)

Sans questions the fairness of the situation: a child that seems able to clean themselves of their past sins with no recollection, while he sits with the weight of a hundred of Papyrus' deaths burned into his memory like a brand. Sometimes, he eats nothing but ketchup for days. The vinegar burns through his system, acidic and like a punishment. (Sans knows that he deserves some kind of punishment; after the first reset he'd stopped thinking of himself as a hero and more like the monster he really is.)

Five hundred and fifth reset: he offs himself.

Five hundred sixth reset: he wakes up on his bed and laughs hysterically.

Five hundred seventh reset: he thanks everything that he still has (not a lot) that Frisk is kind this time.

Five hundred eighth reset: he's getting whiplash.

Five hundred ninth reset: he begs for death, and Frisk is happy to deliver.

Five hundred tenth reset: he puts the whoopee-cushion in their hand. They giggle when it burps. His whole being seems to soften in relief. And:

He leaves the Under.

(It's not the first time; he's not convinced it's the last.)


End file.
